Trump, Xi Seek to Restart Trade Talks at Japan G-20; Stocks Jump

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and China said their presidents will meet in Japan next week to relaunch trade talks after a month-long stalemate, triggering a rally in financial markets.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he had a “very good” phone conversation with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. The two leaders will hold an “extended meeting” at the G-20 summit on June 28-29 in Osaka and “our respective teams will begin talks prior to our meeting,” Trump said on Twitter. The U.S. president had repeatedly threatened more tariffs if Xi spurned the opportunity to talk.

“The meeting might very well go well,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House to officially launch his re-election campaign in Orlando. China wants to make a deal, he added. “That is working out pretty much as I anticipated,” he said.

Later, at the rally in Orlando, Trump said “we’re either going to have a good deal, and a fair deal, or we’re not going to have a deal at all. And that’s ok too, because we are taking in billions and billions of dollars into our treasury and companies are leaving China because they want to avoid paying these large tariffs."

Xi said he’s willing to meet with Trump and exchange views, the state-run China Central Television reported. The two nations’ economic and trade teams should keep in contact on how to solve differences, according to the statement.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency said that Trump initiated the phone call with Xi. Their dispute covers areas ranging from tariffs to Chinese intellectual-property protections.

U.S. stocks extended gains on the news, while Treasuries retreated. The S&P 500 rose about 1% in New York. Asian stocks advanced Wednesday.

Talks broke off last month after the U.S. accused China’s leaders of reneging on provisions of a tentative trade agreement, and Beijing said the U.S. raised its demands. Trump raised tariffs on about $200 billion of Chinese imports to 25%, and said he would expand the tariffs to cover another $325 billion in goods -- essentially everything the country exports to the U.S. -- unless Chinese leaders reversed course.

“The fact that both sides are talking should at least postpone thoughts of a further increase in tariffs, for a while at least,” Iris Pang, an economist at ING Bank N.V. in Hong Kong, wrote in a report. “Both sides will repeat their views on the already drafted terms. But it is difficult to see any concrete progress that would either lead to a deal or improve the current deadlock situation.”

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told senators at a hearing in Washington on Tuesday that the Trump administration will stay tough.

“Our economic relationship with China has been unbalanced and grossly unfair to American farmers, ranchers and businesses for decades,” Lighthizer said in testimony to the Senate Finance Committee. On top of existing tariffs, the administration is prepared to do more “if certain issues cannot be resolved satisfactorily,” he added.

But while expectations have been raised for a breakthrough during the leaders’ face-to-face meeting, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross over the weekend downplayed the prospect of a major deal in the near term.

“I think the most that will come out of the G-20 might be an agreement to actively resume talks,” possibly with new ground rules and a schedule, Ross said in an interview Sunday with the Wall Street Journal.

Paying Tariffs

Trump has said that China must return to concessions it made in earlier rounds of talks. The U.S. president has repeated his claim that Chinese exporters pay the tariffs, disputing the consensus of economists that the costs are largely borne by U.S. importers and consumers.

“They subsidize their industry, so our people are not paying,” Trump said Friday in an interview with Fox News. “There’s this big thing about tariffs, ‘Oh, our people pay.’ It’s a lot of nonsense. You know what happens, really? Companies move back.”

Trump’s announcement of the call came shortly after a tweet in which he again accused China and other countries of manipulating their currencies, “making it unfairly easier for them to compete with the USA.”

China made moves to strengthen its currency earlier this month. During Trump’s presidency the U.S. Treasury Department has repeatedly refrained from officially accusing China of manipulating the yuan.

--With assistance from Josh Wingrove, Shawn Donnan, Chelsea Mes, Jiyeun Lee, Malcolm Scott and Daniel Ten Kate.

To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, ;Brendan Murray at brmurray@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum

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